Five Takeaways From The Africa Cinema Summit

The National Film Authority of Ghana in collaboration with FilmOne Group (Nigeria) and Silverbird Cinema (Ghana), hosted the inaugural Africa Cinema Summit (ACS) from November 14th to 16th at the Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel and Silverbird Cinema in Accra, Ghana.

We covered three days of the summit and we came away with these five interesting takeaways from the event:

1. Africa Needs Better Local Cinema Experiences

Local cinemas tend to promote more Western-based movies including Marvel movies and others. At the Summit, panelists stated that local cinemas can do more to promote local content. They also noted that they can create local “experiences” similar to what was created during the first Black Panther movie.

By incorporating more local cinema experiences, local cinemas can bring in more audiences with this unique promotion style.

2. Box Office Data Is Still An Issue

Unlike our American counterparts, Box Office data can be a crucial data point to understand how movies are trending or performing at movie theatres. In Nigeria and South Africa, there are measurements of how movies are performing finance-wise. But in other countries including Ghana, the data is not widely available.

There needs to be more data monitoring at local cinemas to track the revenue of movies as well as the number of moviegoers.

3. Streaming Platforms Can Be Complementary

Netflix is currently on the continent and the streaming platform has been investing in the local industry including South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria. During the event, panelists noted that streaming platforms like Netflix can be complementary to local cinema.

A local movie can go from the big stream onto the streaming platform and vice versa and this can lead to more viewership.

4. Government Policy

Local Government officials and local industries need to work together to create more policies and platforms for the local industries. During the event, speakers from Uganda and Zimbabwe noted that they try to provide incentives to filmmakers who shoot on location.

A grander policy for movie studios and filmmakers who want to shoot on location in various countries needs to be adopted and a focus on certain incentives needs to be rolled out so the local cinema economy can benefit.

5. The Cinema Experience Can Go Beyond Movies

Although cinemas tend to focus more on the showing of movies, most panelists noted that the cinema experience can go beyond movies.

Some panelists noted that the cinemas can incorporate other experiences including eSports, Kids Cinemas, and others to bring in a different variety of audiences.